16 Quotes by Virginia Woolf about Words
- Author Virginia Woolf
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Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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And there he would lie all day long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he reminded one of a cat watching birds, when he had found the word, and her husband said, "Poor old Augustus--he's a true poet," which was high praise from her husband.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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The number of books in the world is infinite, and one is forced to glimpse and nod and move on after a moment of talk, a flash of understanding, as, in the street outside, one catches a word in passing and from a chance phrase fabricates a lifetime.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair— He took her bag.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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He is forced to coin words himself, and, taking his pain in one hand, and a lump of pure sound in the other (as perhaps the people of Babel did in the beginning), so to crush them together that a brand new word in the end drops out.
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- Author Virginia Woolf
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My head is a hive of words that won't settle.
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